Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Conservative Prime Minister who negotiated Britain's entry into the Common Market and signed the treaty making the UK a member of the European Community.
On the island
Eight records
A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1)
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Andre Previn
I remember being thrilled by it... Of course for me it's also the sea, this magnificent opening with the trumpet calls as the wave comes along, and then the crash as it rolls over you.
Piano Trio in B-flat major, D. 898
Alfred Cortot, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo Casals
Because at Oxford I did get to know a vast range of chamber music, but I think the Schubert is my real favorite, and it has another connection with it.
Der Rosenkavalier (Trio from the final act)
Very romantic and I adore it. I remember I think it was probably the first performance given at [Glyndebourne]. After the first act I walked outside and there walked in Sir Thomas Armstrong... And Sir Thomas said, Well, It's a young man's opera. And I said, Sir Thomas, with the greatest respect, it's an opera for all those who don't grow old.
If I Were a Rich Man (from Fiddler on the Roof)
It always seemed to me to convey the sadness of people who aren't in their own homes and find very little possibility of ever getting to what they really regard as home, but constantly moved on from place to place. ... But the thing I like is if I were a rich man, because I think on a desert island I could sit there and just contemplate what I would do if I were a rich man, knowing I'm never going to be worried by that problem.
Cockaigne Overture (In London Town), Op. 40
London Symphony Orchestra, Edward Heath
Elgar has made such a contribution to British music, putting us back on the map after Mendelssohn described us as just [a land without music], that we really must have Elgar on the desert island.
Prisoners' Chorus (from Fidelio)
Chicago Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti
Of all the operas, Fidelio is the greatest. ... The prisoners' chorus is extolling the virtues of freedom. And this is really what I've always stood for in my political life. Nobody expressed this greater than Beethoven did.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, 'From the New World'
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti
I conducted it in Beijing at a gala concert in aid of the disabled people of China. It really was a very thrilling occasion. ... We raised altogether one and a quarter million dollars from one concert. ... I said, You may think that we haven't altogether made a success of the old world. But now you and the Pacific are the new world, and it's up to you to make a rather better job of it than we've done.
Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, English Chamber Orchestra, Edward Heath
This is taken from a record which I did a little while back, which was entirely Christmas music. It's this glorious carol which Mendelssohn wrote. And here it has a descant in the last verse.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:18Which of those three things has brought you greatest pleasure: politics, music, or your love of the sea?
I think I'm fortunate in that they all have. In fact, I think they've complemented each other. You can't spend all your life on politics. Those people who think the politics are the be all and end all of life are greatly mistaken, and I think they suffer from it.
Presenter asks
1:53Does the thought of solitary isolation worry you?
It horrifies me because I like people, I like good company, I like uh good food and wine and enjoying myself. On the other hand, I have never had any real time just to sit back and do nothing. And so that'll be a relief to be able to do that on a desert island.
Presenter asks
8:10Your mother and father wanted you to be professional musicians, but there was also talk of your going into the church, wasn't there?
Yes, uh I think my mother was rather keen that I should go into the church. At one time I thought quite seriously about it. But uh my father really wanted me to be an accountant. And uh I didn't want that, I protested against that. My father died at the age of eighty eight. And just before he died he said, Well, you became Prime Minister, but I still wish you'd taken up a respectable occupation.
The keepsakes
The book
Works of the Impressionist Painters
Then I could sit on my desert island and study them one by one.
The luxury
Presenter asks
9:19Were you a kind of ordinary working class lad amongst the best that the public schools had to offer at Balliol?
Yes. The great advantage of [Balliol] is that it has such enormous variety. I have always felt grateful for the fact that having come from really a very small village by the seaside and a grammar school, I was then able to go to a college which, although it was only two hundred and eighty strong, had such an enormous variety of members. ... None of these [pressure to change], no. Mind you, I hope that they were all right when I got there.
Presenter asks
18:18How do you cope with criticisms that you've spent the last thirteen years sulking in your tent because Mrs Thatcher replaced you as leader?
There's nothing you can do about them. Perhaps one day people will start to deal with the arguments instead of uh merely repeating these phrases. Of course what it does reveal is that they can't cope with the arguments. So their only escape is uh is abuse.
Presenter asks
21:51When you were Prime Minister, you had an ideal of the sort of world you wanted to live in. How do we fall short of that today?
Of course I wanted us to be part of the European community, and we managed to bring that about. And I wanted to bring about a better standard of living for the people of our own country and better relationships between all the different groups in our country after all. As I said, when I was at Oxford, we had no class snobbishness. We were all different, but we all had the same aims and objectives and the same values. And that's what I think one needs in a country.
“It horrifies me because I like people, I like good company, I like uh good food and wine and enjoying myself. On the other hand, I have never had any real time just to sit back and do nothing.”
“just before he died he said, Well, you became Prime Minister, but I still wish you'd taken up a respectable occupation.”
“I said, Sir Thomas, with the greatest respect, it's an opera for all those who don't grow old.”
“On one occasion we came into harbour and went slap into the harbour, where we didn't move the pier, but we'd entered the boat, and of course you had a whole ray of observers... we couldn't get round again in time.”
“It really is heavenly. There's no other phrase about it. It's uh so peaceful and quiet. You wouldn't know we were in a town, you're alone in a great city. Uh at the bottom of the garden I have two rivers joining, and then flowing on is the river Avon.”